final fantasy viii: fated circle
by kazeno
Summary: around and around and around they go; where they'll stop, nobody knows for destiny holds them in thrall; she'll not set them free, not at all.
1. tears

tears

[llyse]

You are crying, shoulders shaking, arms wrapped tightly around your body. You sit in the corner, hidden by the bed and the wall, and she would have missed you, with your soundless crying, if she had not been a sorceress, senses and feelings heightened. She has felt your distress from three rooms away, especially with the curious ability-enhancing quality of this aptly named Lunatic Pandora, and she comes.

Tears, she says, reaching out with one pale hand to touch equally pale face. You jerk away, defensive amidst the ragged ruins of your pride. She is a ghost here, drifting formless through the corridors and walls with calm abandon, looking everywhere, keeping watch on her loyal knights and fighters--who now number three. Does it seem surprising that she should look in on you?

What are you doing, you say, the fierce pride still evident in your voice even through the tear-rough sound in it. You remind her of someone, do you know that? –Someone buried in the mists of her memory, her past. These mists are thick and sluggish, and nothing penetrates them, but names and memories float out once in a while, thoughts on which she stakes all her actions. Matron (are you all right?), Cid, Squall (silence), Rinoa (I promise you this, I will--), Sorceress (...and they'll use you and _leave_ you, and where will you be, lost and...), _Seifer_ (...you'll take care of me...), time compression--

Watching, she replies. Watching always watching she's been watching ghostly for five thousand _years_ and _more--_she was there when Hyne died, she knows, and she has watched herself watching this girl who feels like herself--no, that's not right. She cannot be watching herself... watching herself... watching...

It hurts when she thinks. She is Ultimecia, the Watcher. It is enough.

Leave, you say, and the anger is rising to replace the teary edge. Sharp, like the edges of her shuriken. No, not hers. Yours, yet it seems she can almost remember it, its heft, its weight, the way it slices the air when she hurls it--Ghosts, ghosts all. Go _away_! Trouble her no more with their false memories, or she'll... she'll... She does not know.

And now you stand, anger burning a flame into the core of your heart, leaving ice behind. You are inexplicably furious, though when you think of it it does not seem so inexplicable, with this... this Woman (perfectly deserving of the capital letter, she), this Sorceress roaming the ship like a ghost, and Seifer too looking like one, or sometimes like a little lost haunted child, lost in dreaming, and _her_ the source of it all. You _hate_ her. You _despise_ her with all the fury of a girl who considers a boy _hers_ only to have him snatched away. And it is selfish, you know, but you love him.

Why do you cry, little girl, she says, voice silky smooth. The rough timbre is obvious in yours, worse even than those accentuated c's she throws around when she gets mad, smokeharsh voice wavering as tears are fiercely dashed away. Show no weakness. She smiles at you, your heights perfectly matched although she always seemed taller, dark gown swaying and that long silver hair shimmering in the otherworldly light from the whitestone lamp sitting on the table. But then so does yours, do you know that?

Business, none. It is habit, and you slip back into it easily, feeling its comfort even through you know there should be no comfort to be had here in her presence. Overwhelming, she is, but do you realize that you too are haughty and proud and brave, and no less than she?

She laughs, tinkling bells. Of course not, she says, but I _do_ so want to know--_want to understand you_, but she says not that last, quietly smiling at this enigmatic girl, this _you_, who is strong yet weak, brave yet shy, selfish yet selfless, and strangely familiar in a way she cannot fathom. You are, but what are you? Are you crying for yourself? Your fate, as it is, in this cruel world? Her voice is gently mocking.

You halt, arrested. Your eye flashes as you ponder the answer. No, finally, and _I don't know why I'm saying this, but_ I'm crying for him. And I shall not, anymore. 

She watches you go, and she smiles. There will be another day, to unravel this mystery.


	2. cadence

cadence (remember to BREATHE)

[llyse]

            Step step step, breathe. Step step step, breathe, a familiar cadence burnt into her heart during the times in the Lunatic Pandora, waiting for Seifer to return from whenever he'd been going. Step step step, breathe. Always wandering the halls, conscious of the _fact_ of Seifer's madness, the dreams swathing his mind like mist or fog. Seifer had always been the cleverest of them all, the leader, the intelligent one. Maybe that was his downfall. Raijin was too simpleminded to be affected, and Fujin?

            Fujin had no dreams.

            Step step step, _breathe_.

            He hadn't come out for days, hiding in his room, lost. Not in dreaming—she had spoken to him before, and his eyes had none of the glazed dreamer's look, the look of someone (doing what he was doing now?) hiding behind a thin sheen of non-thought, following the dream. Seifer was awake. She called to him; he didn't answer. Raijin called to him; he didn't answer. Perhaps it was the new experience of being looked down on, the feeling of being lower than the lowest beggar the way the townsfolk treated them even after Squall (how nice of him, said Seifer) had announced their pardon, although they could not (would not) return to Garden. It was too distinctive, that scar. Marking him forever, traitor and betrayer. He came out in the end, haggard and quiet and newly introspective, so thoughtful it scared her. Pat on the back for the both of them, a secret little smile that said, "What, are you still here?"

            Seifer had no dreams left.

            Step step step, _breath__e_.

            It was not to be believed. Seifer Almasy, brought down by a couple of knife-wielding toughs in a dark alley in Deling (stinking like offal, she remembered thinking). Of course the Hyperion was long gone by then, sold for the gil to treat the illness that bore away their darkly bright friend anyway. The storm felt wrong without thunder, too quiet. Afraid of the dark, the last two (when had it been three—too long) drew together. The door was shut. Step step step, breathe, went Fujin outside it, the same cadence drumming on the polished floor that was never marred no matter how many times hard bootheels clattered across them. The same cadence drumming in her heart. It seemed she was always drumming the cadence outside while Seifer slept, or dreamed, or…

            The door opened.

            Step step step, _breathe_.

            He would not speak. The doctor said that he could, that he _should_, else he forget how to speak (secret amused smile, but she was not amused), but he would not. The doctor also suggested that Fujin speak to him. The sun was cold. Seifer would not say anything, and she did not know what to say, and Raijin was not there (don't think) to offer kind words or suggestions or funny stupid jokes… Finally, driven to the edge, she talked. She spoke about the fight that many years ago (has it _really_ been eighteen?). She rambled about the startling news that Squall's son had failed his SeeD exam. She reported Irvine's new promotion to headmaster of Galbadia Garden. She reminisced about Raijin and the times they'd had together. In desperation, she even mentioned his dreams. Seifer smiled, but she could see the darkness behind stormy irises, a haunting wallpaper of mistakes and errors and regrets saturated with pain.

            "I don't need dreams," Seifer said. "I've got you."

            Fujin forgot to breathe. 


	3. the lion's cub

stats****

NAME: Delyn Raine Leonhart  
SEX: Male   
AGE: 17   
HEIGHT: 161cm  
WEIGHT: 54kg  
WEAPON/POSITION: Mirrorwand/Gunblade specialist   
RANK: Senior Student

(delyn is happy squall's son. delyn is wonderful top student in balamb. delyn follows in his father's footsteps, uses the gunblade like a pro, passes the seed test, fights sorceresses, gets the pretty girl who is herself a sorceress and seifer's daughter, becomes commander of the garden, saves the world, retires happily with his wife and seven children. delyn is a big hero, and among his friends he counts the children of irvine and selphie—of course gun and close combat specialists—and the children of zell and quistis, or zell, and quistis—instructors or martial arts specialists, of course—and used to have a nice rivalry going with seifer—who returned to the garden—'s daughter before bedding her. happy heroic doings et cetera yadda yadda to infinity and beyond. right?)

the lion's cub

[llyse]

He always dreamt the same thing.

            In his first dream, he would be running wildly, fleeing from a formless, faceless entity that wanted—what? He would not know, would not think to now or wonder. He would just run, thoughts scattering like quail before formless terror, just as he would scatter before the one chasing him. In his dream, he would run, and he would run, and he would fall, breath whooshing out in a soundless puff as the world of impressions shifted around him and the thing would snatch him up. He would _know_ it was bad, that it meant to devour him, to destroy every shred of _him that was and replace it with another. This he knew for in dreams there was no sight, no sound, no touch, no taste, no _world_, only disjointed impressions that would rush through him unstoppably as the dream would draw to a close. The thing would hold him up, and stare at him coldly, and it would be_ him_, calm and perfect and wonderfully heroic, as he would never be. A leader of men, a strong lover, a great fighter. And even as he saw it, he knew it already was _him_, at the same time that _he_ was him. _

            And he would wake up, and scream.

            Graffiti seen in Deling City slum building:

                        "That Leonhart kid is HOT! Just like his dad."

            The gunblade's tip sliced through the air, graceful death in a length of polished shimmering steel alloy, reflecting sunlight every which way. A new design, the guy who had upgraded it for me said, special just for the Commander's son. Metal somehow cut and beveled and forged into a surface composed of uneven planes of metal that cut as smoothly as any other blade along the edge, but with the uneven metal on the blade it did not reflect light, it _sprayed_ light, sometimes a halo, sometimes a hundred thousand spots all around me. Mirrorwand, the guy called it.

            Delyn, she asks.

            Quiet, like all of them. They don't dare to interrupt me when I'm practicing, all because my father used to accidentally hit people all the time when _he_ was practicing. The gunblade swings in an arc, less impressive perhaps than father's Lionheart, but no less special. Not that I wanted it to be special, but the shop owner said just a normal upgrade. I should have been suspicious when he asked for twice the normal amount of adamantine.

            Delyn, she repeats, more forcefully now. Delyn Raine Leonhart: Knight of Demetera, mother of Squall, and family of the Lion. If there ever was a name for a future hero, this is it, Delyn being the supposed knight of Demetera, the one who stuck with her through a whole lifetime of hunting rogue sorceresses back during the Centra wars. If that's what being a knight means, I think I'll pass.

            Yes, I say. Turn. It's Ceresia Kinneas, Ceres for short, daughter of Irvine and Selphie Kinneas. Her parents were great SeeDs, great heroes, I guess. Lousy parents, though, the way they kept leaving her with my family when they went out on missions. Father used to say that Uncle Irvine and Aunt Selphie never grew up, and never would, but Uncle Irvine grew up, I guess, when Aunt Selphie died, eight years ago. As far as I remember, Uncle Irvine hasn't been back to Balamb since. He's become faculty at Galbadia Garden, and rumor has it that he's hard on everybody and especially himself. Ceres hasn't seen him since she was eight. He won't see her. Says she reminds him of her mother. 

            Get out of your snit, she says. She's the only one who talks to me like that. I wonder if the fact that I'm sleeping with her has anything to do with it. We're not really lovers, actually, but… Well, maybe a _little_. But even if we're lovers it's not _official_, because then there'd be a flood of reproachful 'mails coming to my network account and a flood of hate 'mail to _hers_.

            I'm not in a snit, I say, but she's already going on, running over my words like always, I _know_ when you're sulking, 'cause that's the only time you actually practice with your gunblade privately and not in the Training Center. So what's bugging you this time?

            I just didn't want to get spied on in the Training Center and get followed around by a dozen new students ooh-ing and aah-ing and saying how like my father I am. Guess that the closest they'll get to the great Squall Leonhart is to his son.

            Sucks to be you, says Ceres.

            Sucks to be you, say I. At least I have a father, I think. He's usually busy with stuff, anyway, and when he talks to me it's usually gunblade tips, but he _is_ there. Mother talks to me, and I know she loves me. I suppose she understands me a little, about the expectations and suchlike being the daughter of an important general. Sometimes I wish I was born female.

            Come on, kid, Ceres is saying, grinning like a fiend. Quite a recognizable expression, the one she wears whenever she's spoiling for a fight. Whatever she said about me being in a snit, I can tell she's pissed about something, too. Let's see how you fight. (she says)

            We fight.

            He always dreamt the same thing.

            In his second dream, he would be walking along a road leading into darkness. All around him would be mist, veiling him in a fog of off-white that would muffle and eat up all sound, light, and (it seemed) touch. No, touch he would have, but any other sense was eclipsed by the clammy mist pushing against him. It seemed his legs would move independently of his body, driving him on and on past countless turnings in the road. Where he would have chosen one path, they would invariably choose another, and it seemed he would be too weak to resist it, too weak to stop the footsteps carrying him to the (what?) future. It seemed that slowly strings of shimmering silver would become visible in the mist, and suddenly he would know that they were controlling, thousands of fine threads dancing him like a puppet.

            And he would wake up, and scream.

            Balamb Instructor's report—Leonhart, Delyn Raine:

Student is slightly dreamy at times, but usually attentive. Scores are above average, and he has obviously inherited his father's genes. Excels in gunblades and magic, quiet and polite. This child will have a glorious future, as expected of the son of Squall Leonhart.

            Morning's light is soft and quiet. Like a shy lover, it creeps into the room on light feet, afraid of startling the sleeper, until it can caress the sleeper's skin with soft warm fingers of light, diffuse glow warming and setting aglow exposed skin and hair. As it flows ever forwards, it becomes a blanket, gently glowing on the sleeper's skin, settling into the sleeper's flesh until the sleeper glows like a child of the gods. Sometimes, as wisps of clouds chase themselves across the blue flame of the sky, it appears mottled, then settles itself back into stillness, gently warming.

            Sometimes my (overbearing) lyricism surprises me.

            It's morning, as I've said; the sunlight is coming in, and the sleeper hasn't awakened. Ceres has been known to sleep through thunderstorms. Right now she's glowing slightly gold, we're glowing slightly gold, warm and comfortable tangle of arms and legs illuminated by the light shining in through the oversized glass windows (special rooms for the Commander's son indeed). Ceres must have got up in the night, because I always draw the curtains. _She_ always draws them back. It pisses me off. The notion of anybody in an aircraft (and there are damn many of them nowadays) being able to see me sprawled half-dressed in bed creeps me out, but it doesn't seem to bother her, although she's got less on than I do.

            Today is the SeeD exam. I don't want to get up and out of this room, because once I do, I'll have to go forward. Forward to the exam, to the SeeD status everybody's certain I'll get; to the future I don't want to think about. It's dark, all of it. Everybody thinks I'd _love_ to be a SeeD because father and mother and all their friends are, as if everybody in the world loves swinging weapons around. Sometimes I feel I've been shepherded all my life.

            Four-year-old me, getting accepted into Balamb Garden as a SeeD cadet (even though I didn't ask for it). Six-year-old me, getting a gunblade shoved into my hands at weapon selection time before I even got a chance to look at anything else (gunblades are so… in your face). Ten and eleven and twelve-year-old me, automatically enrolled into whatever classes the best students study, because my father was one (I hate most of them).

            But then again, I suppose it's my own fault. I _did_ go along with everything they chose and I _didn't_ object or scream with fury. As Ceres says, I'm a spineless, gutless toad. People control my life because I _let_ them control my life. It's much too late to change now, though. I'm set, and I'm set, but I'm not set for the exam. I hate them. If I pass, everyone behaves as if it's to be expected. If I fail, everybody will smile and pat me on the head and say never mind, you must have been in a bad mood or something, and my father will scowl at me and my mother will sigh.

            Somebody's being self-pitying today. Ceres would hit me if she were awake.

            Sooner or later the light is going to intensify, and I'll have to get up and draw the curtains. Ceres will probably wake up, and then I'll really have to get up and get dressed and get ready to get going on the test to get my SeeD-ship. Not that I want it.

            For now, though, I'd rather lie here and watch the sunlight.

            He always dreamt the same thing.

            In his third dream, he would be walking through the Garden, talking with people and smiling at them and generally being nice and sociable. Everyone he would meet would greet him respectfully, calling him 'Sir' and 'Commander' and bowing. He would be happy, and contented. He would go on missions, time rushing by like a sped-up waterfall of minutes and seconds and hours and days, would be heroic and gallant and everything he was supposed to be but didn't want to be. But somehow still he would feel that there was something wrong, that there was a reason that he was being treated this way, a reason other than his own merits. And then he would turn, and look into a mirror and he would see Squall Leonhart staring back at him.

            And he would wake up, and scream.

            SeeD test report for Team B, Test 0399:

                        Instructor-in-Charge: Milena Edwards

            Members: Delyn Raine Leonhart (team leader), Marcus Denverian, Alyssa Cardis Revraine

Team generally performed well in test. Leonhard suffered mental breakdown partway through test and fled the battleground after killing an enemy soldier.


	4. hashad

has/had (blink of an eye)

[llyse]

            Squall, they say, has always been a bit of an overachiever.

            Oops, sorry, make that had.

            You weren't always like that, I know. Isn't it strange, that in life I paid no attention to you, and you to me, but in death, now, I have studied you, talking to everyone about you, probing into secrets and pasts and histories. I'm not too sure you would have approved. I know Mother doesn't, but then Mother doesn't approve of anything these days. Nor has she _said_ anything for quite some time, but that's another matter. 

            Back to the point. You weren't always so intent on winning, on training and pushing yourself to the limit to become the best. As a child, you were just a _child_, until your Sis was taken away from you, isn't it so? Ellone sobbed when she told me about it, that's how she misses you. And then, you learnt that you wanted to protect, to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. It was helpful too that there was Seifer nearby, to test and pit yourself against. You didn't want to stand in the rain crying any more. 

            Then there was the exam. The turning point, one might say, for your fortunes. To tell the truth, you were not _that_ great—your instructors (those that're still alive, of course) say that you were above average, but not genius potential. Truly. Seifer, they said, was the truly talented one, the one who picked up blade and chant easy as breathing. But he was too headstrong. Three times he failed the exam, all for not obeying orders. Seifer just wasn't a military man, not until his blood cooled.

            You weren't special. Did it rankle, father (it feels odd calling you father now—sir just seems to leap to my lips and mind automatically when I think of you), did it rankle to not be special? To know that perhaps there were people stronger than you who could take away what you wanted to protect no matter what you did?

            Well, the Dollet exam. Of course Seifer participated (how could he not? His last year, it was), and the rest of his posse. They were remembered by all as overbearing and fairly unsuited to being a Disciplinary Committee except for Fujin but I think… I don't know what I _think_, except that I could swear that I saw Seifer Almasy on a street in Deling that day, calm and smiling, but his eyes looked dark. Life teaches its lessons well, or perhaps Seifer is still a quick learner.

            I seem to have wandered off the topic. Oh well, for the third time, the Dollet exam. Your team: Instructor-in-Charge, Quistis Trepe; Team Leader, Seifer Almasy; team members, Squall Leonhart, Zell Dincht. Instructions: hold the town square. No contact with any other teams. And matters got out of hand. What were you thinking, father, when you allowed Seifer to drag you all towards the communication tower? Was it bravado? Was it the fear of losing to Seifer? Or was it the heat of the moment, much like the fury that must have surged through you when you returned Seifer's stroke and carved the signs of destiny on his face to mirror yours? I wish I knew.

            Seifer might have been devastated. His failing the test might have contributed to him falling so easily (headstrong hot-blooded Seifer. Why?) to Edea. He wanted greatness much too much. And you… you took the Timber assignment and got dragged into a whole load of trouble. Now, it seems, I'm gaining a better appreciation for you. Not yet the forbidding, strong Commander—then you were just a cadet, frightened and wondering if you did the right thing. That was when Mother met you, I know. She was pretty back then, wasn't she? Still is pretty now—sorceresses age slowly, buoyed by magic. You met Mother and accomplished her scheme and went to the TV station and saw Seifer step off the edge to eternal dreaming. And the rest is history.

            Always I wondered what you were like back then. Were you strong or weak, confident or shy? I guess nobody will ever know, because I've asked everyone, from Grandma Edea down to Uncle Nida, and they say that you were very quiet, almost rude (whatever), and if you were skilled at anything, it was at hiding your feelings from everyone.

            The war. After the war. You returned through Time Compression, victorious. During the celebration party, heady from wine and victory you and Mother conceived me. Shotgun or not, the wedding was three weeks later. Everyone else was happy. You went on to become an outstanding SeeD and later Commander. Rinoa, too, took her SeeD exam and became SeeD. Just a normal SeeD, but it didn't matter, as long as she could be with you. 

            The rest of your friends? Seifer and Fujin and Raijin (admittedly, not truly friends) vanished—there were sightings of them, of course, but after you announced their pardon, everything died down. Quistis never regained her instructor status, but I think she was happier anyway without the burden of seeing her students go out and try to get themselves killed. She never got married—doesn't trust herself in a relationship, I hear. Selphie married Irvine, and chose to stay at Balamb with him, and then died a few years later. I don't even remember her face. After her death, Irvine transferred back to Galbadia Garden, and worked his way up to commander. Zell became your Second-in-Command, your advisor, and your public relations officer. He made up for Irvine's getting married, with affairs left and right. 

            Life was good. And then it all came down on us.

            It started with the SeeD exam. The one that I failed. I suppose I was kind of wrong to turn my temper on you like that, but I couldn't stand being patronized any more, and not being what I was. I swore to you that day that I wouldn't stand for it any more. I kept my promise, too. That very day I moved in with Ceres, bought myself a good pair of handguns (Ceres dubbed them Gemini) and started to learn in earnest from Instructor Kanzen. The Garden was agog for a few weeks. Then Mother started having her trances and acting strange.

You—all of you—should have seen something wrong, but Cid was running the orphanage and Edea was dead and Ellone was taking care of Laguna in Esthar and nobody thought of asking them via the laser VCS. Mother would go into trances, and you would try to wake her. I heard about all of it through the Garden grapevine—by that time I wasn't talking to you any more. 

            For a time Mother got worse, and the rift between you and me grew wider, you being too busy to talk at all. Then Mother took a turn for the better. She seemed alert, seemed herself. You had the time to come and talk to me; to tell me about your youth, how you grew up, why you fought and everything else. We started to mend fences, with Uncle Zell's noisy enthusiastic help.

            I still remember that day. I was practicing at the Training Center with Ceres, having fun shooting up the (really quite useless) monsters and staying well away from the T-Rexaurs. Twirling my guns, laughing with Ceres, laughing _at_ Ceres when she overextended with her shock-spear and fell flat on the ground, sent flying as the dormitory-side wall exploded outwards in a shower of masonry and other things that didn't bear thinking of.

            I still remember seeing Mother step out of the rubble, her eyes glowing.

            I still remember seeing you step out of the rubble, your face set.

            Lionheart always looked pretty, that electric blue glow contained in a blade-shape slashing. Mother's ice looked prettier, shimmering all shades of light blue as it stabbed straight through your heart. I saw the look in her eyes as she realized what she had done, glow taking on shades of pain and then vanish before she fainted, not saying a word. And that was it: the end of the Sorceress' Knight, Commander of Balamb Garden, one of the six heroes responsible for slaying the dread Ultimecia. Killed by your wife.

            It all happened in the blink of an eye.


	5. queen of hearts

queen of hearts

[llyse]

             She stood in the light; they stood in the dark. She could not see for the light; yet she _knew_ they were there. The light was around her and in her, it was all of her, came fro her, and yet was apart form her, and she felt that should she open her eyes, she would be blinded. She would not open her eyes; open, and she would lose the light. She would not move, either; step out of the light, and she would have to face the darknes.

            The world was darkness. The light made her feel safe, but through it all she could still feel the creeping, stinking darkness that was the world beyond. The darkness sounded of death and smelt of rot, felt like a weary lassitude that sapped her strength and diminished her will to live. It tasted like blood, copper-sweet, copper-sharp. She did not belong here, not in this Garden of deadly flowers. She wanted to bloom in the sunlight, fed by rain and earth, not in this place that was nourished on blood. But for love she entered, and for love she would not leave.

            So she stayed in the light. The light fed her, and she dreamed. Dreamed of the days past, before she had joined the Garden of Blood. Sometimes she dreamed of returning, of being summoned back to the Garden by voice and touch, and she would be angry, and lash out—words, actions, magic—but it was all right, because it was a dream. The light was all that was real, and the rest were dreams. Sometimes she heard songs, singing. The Singer (singers?) taught her his (its? Their?) songs, haunting and uplifting, sweet and harsh, sad and merry. She sang, finding peace in the singing, feeling the songs strengthen the light and drive the darkness further away.

            And they stayed in the dark, and watched.

            "Little princess."

            The little girl was small. She was pretty, dark and fair, airy light feet dancing on the floor as the stately woman sat at the piano, airy light fingers dancing on the keys. 

            "Little princess mine."

            The little girl was precious. She was loved, and she knew it. She was. Confidence bloomed in her mind, fed by caring. Her smile was radiant, sparkling, she a light butterfly the very image of her stately mother. Her mother had a song that was special, she knew. Her mother would play it late at night when her father was asleep, and the little girl would creep down and listen, and her mother would tell her the story of the singer and the soldier. The little girl thought it was grand to have an admirer like that; someone who came to watch you and adored you for you. And her mother would smile sadly and say, _not if he's a soldier._

            Because he never came back.

            Later, when the dexterous fingers stilled and the quicksilver sparkle faded, the little girl grew more graceful, prettier, as if to make up for the stately woman's absence. 

            "Little princess."

            "_Father!" Giggle. The little girl was still a little girl, but big enough to believe that she was not little anymore._

            "I stand corrected. Little queen, you. Queen of my heart."

            The little girl laughed, sparkling.

            She never remembered how to play her mother's song.

            "Little princess."

            "I'm not so little any more, you know?"

            "Sorry."

            They were her friends. No, they were her knights, her bodyguards, her loyal followers. A princess needed a court, after all, ladies-in-waiting and maids and knights and soldiers and squires and servants. And the dog, lolling at her feet with an air of self-satisfaction. He was as pampered as she had ever been, was that dog, named after the tutor she had nursed a youthful crush on once (tall and diffident, good-looking with that flaming hair tugged into a ponytail and the spectacles that made him look mature).

            "Will I be your princess forever?"

            "Course! And when you grow up, you'll be our Queen!"

            "Can I be King?"

            "Little princess."

            Silvery laughter. "If I'm a princess, what does that make _you_, then?"

            "Why, the knight, of course."

            He bent and kissed her fingers, and she _had_ to laugh. The General was forgotten, the darkness that had grown between them when the little girl stopped being a little girl and learnt to dislike what her father did for a living thrown to the winds. It was probably a tremendous embarrassment for the General's daughter to be leading a rebellion against his country, which was part of the reason she did it. That, and to be free of his smothering looming presence. But now, with this young handsome princeling, she felt free and wild.

            He was a mercenary-in-training, a would-be dealer of death, but that did not matter as the sky was blue and the sun was shining and they were both young and liked each other (love? Best not to think of that, now.)

            "You're a princess now, but you're elegant enough for a queen."

            "Flatterer."

            And it did not last, because mercenaries were still soldiers, and although he _did_ come back, he left immediately after. But she would think back to that light-filled summer with wonder at their joy and at the innocence.

            "Princess?"

            "What's wrong with that?"

            "You look like one, but you don't act like one."  
  


            "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

            "…Whatever."

            That was how he was, always. Gruff, cold, apparently-uncaring, and only a sorceress (or one who deliberately tried to understand him) could guess at the sorrows and darkness locked in that icy heart of his. The Dark Knight was never an expressive person, and she leant from him that words were not the only way for people to communicate, not praises and presents the only way to show appreciation. His words were rare; thus so with his gifts. She learnt to recognize the gentle smile he gave her in the mornings as a gift, and the way his voice warmed when he spoke to her, and the way he blushed when she (only _she_) teased him.

            Although he never said it, she _knew_ she was the queen of his heart.

            "You could be a princess, but that would make your father a king."

            "That _does_ sound absurd."

            But she felt that the former-instructor was more of a Queen than she; yet still she knew that she ruled (wanted to rule?) that lonely royal heart.

            "Princess?" Blue-eyed laugh, unfettered merriment. "Sure, an exotic Oriental princess."

            "Maybe we should make a play. For the Garden Festival, you know, with Squall as the prince and—" the bright one trailed off into dreaming.

            "Princess suits you to a T, pretty lady." The flirt bent to kiss her fingers (like someone now lost to dreaming), one hand on his hat to prevent it from falling off. The bright one glared at him, mercurial shift of temper from joyful to annoyed. He laughed back, bending to kiss her fingers as well, and she giggled. "She's a princess, but you're the queen of my heart," the flirt declared expansively to the bright one.

            "Don't' worry," the laughing boy reassured her. "We still love you."

            She loved them, and they loved her. It comforted her, that there were people who loved her for her, and yet (it was always _yet_) she found she could not reconcile them with the killers that they were. Mission after mission, after she became one of them, another blood-flower in that dark Garden (and there were plenty of missions, what with the rebellions in Deling, monsters in Esthar, and the remnants of the dread Sorceress's followers attacking Balamb) she watched them kill. Oh, she knew they killed, when she fought with them against Ultimecia, but that was for a Cause. It had been hard enough to stomach that. This—this was for money, and she watched them kill men and monsters alike without batting an eyelid, and go home. And _then_ they were teenagers again, children getting drunk and dancing and teasing each other.

            She kept count in her head of the people she killed, and one day she awoke to find that she had lost count. She had sobbed, and he had held her lovingly, stroking her hair with the same hand that opened death-wounds. He did not understand. She _knew_ that he would not hurt her, but the darkness crept into her mind and tinted the world.

            Here in the light, she was safe.

            "Mother?"

            Light and dark alike uttered the double-syllabled word. She had not been aware that she had spoken until the light-dark boundary threw the words back at her _mother mother mother_…

            They were there, she knew. They were watching. And there was more light now, and she had to take a step to get to the edge of it, where she pressed her palms against the opaque darkness and _willed_ them to her.

            "Mother?" (_mother mother mother_)

            First the stately woman, smiling as she rarely did in life, arms outstretched in welcome, smile a promise of love. Then the young man, eyes dark pools of misery, arms outstretched in need, lips parted to call her. But to go to them would be to exit the light, and she held her position.

            _Mother, please. Return to us._

            Return to darkness? No, thank you.

            "Mother, why don't you come back?"

            The stately woman smiled, and said nothing.

            She spread her arms (had she arms? She was light.) in welcome.

            "Come to me."

            The young man pressed palms against the light. _I cannot._ The woman shook her head. _I will not. Come to _me_, my child._

She almost did. But the darkness reached out and _touched_ her, and she opened her eyes involuntarily before she remembered that it would catapult her into dreams of blood and darkness. The dark knight jumped back in her dream as she rose, driven to fury. _No more!_ The light answered her, slamming him away from her, breaking the wall to pieces. She followed, buoyed on light, consumed by light. She would bring the light to them! She would drown their darkness and their blood in endless tides of light until there was no darkness, only light (but a dream, it was, but she was beyond caring).

            He stood as she neared, raising a blade of cerulean light (why should there be light in this darkness, light perverted into an instrument of death, so wrong, so completely utterly wrong--). She fashioned light to meet him, cerulean to match, and drove it through the heart of his evil.

            _Thou may'st withdraw, loyal subject. I, thy Queen, command thee._

            The betrayal-pain in chocolate eyes rammed shards of ice into her heart. The light chased him (she—she was the light) as he went, and snagged him—and lost him—

            No dream, this.

A/N 20/2003: Be reminded that this is sort-of Rin's hallucinations. Understanding is optional. (llamajoy, ho. D'ye recognize that description of Rin's tutor? I hoped you would. I couldn't resist.)


	6. fall

fall

[llyse]

            He loved his son dearly, but sometimes he wanted to strangle the boy.

            He supposed that every parent wanted the best for his son. Whether that 'best' meant that the child would be like him or not like him, depended on the parent's own upbringing. Squall did _not_ want his son to grow up like he grew up, friendless and alone and ignored because he _wanted_ to be ignored. He supposed that he need not have worried about that.

            The celebrated son of Squall Leonhart, Delyn had the upbringing Squall had wanted him to have. Cadets flocked around him, cooing over the little boy, and later the proud youngster who had inherited his father's dark-brown hair, his mother's slender physique, a pair of hazel eyes closer to startling gold than brown that came from neither parent, and a boundless charm that was probably a gift from Hyne. Gunblade classes, leadership classes, high scores in _all_ classes—that was Delyn. The boy was intelligent, talented and quick on the uptake. A fine SeeD-to-be. And if his parents had to go out and run the risk of death once in a while, well, so did the parents of many people.

            Squall wondered when he started to go wrong, idyllic life rotting inside-out. Squall didn't know. The boy seemed fine.

            And then he failed his SeeD test. Not just failed, mind you. Killed a man, and ran like hell was on his heels. Scared of blood. Monsters were not human beings. Squall had been understanding, and Delyn had exploded.

            (_Stop telling me that there's another test, dammit! I know that there's another test. I'm not taking it. I don't want to be a goddamned mercenary. Go away, father, take your platitudes somewhere else. I never wanted any of this. I—never—wanted—this! Everything! I don't even like__ the bloody gunblade!)_

            Delyn had moved in with Ceresia Kinneas, and taken up the handgun with a ferocity that beggared description. He went after everything that was the opposite of what he had been doing. Piloting lessons from Nida, lessons from the Garden mechanics (gardeners, one could say), lessons from actual gardeners… he seemed to take an unholy joy in getting his hands grubby, whether in soil or in oil. Squall kept his peace. Rinoa went mad.

            It was a gradual thing. She would be fine and Squall would catch her singing quietly to herself—in the shower, in the office, while cooking, some song that he couldn't catch. Over time, these periods developed into full-fledged trances, where Rinoa would simply drift off, seemingly unaware of anything happening around her, and she'd sing or hum under her breath, softly and in a language that Squall had never heard before. Later on, she started snapping at whoever interrupted her, first verbally then with magic. It got to the point where Squall had to forbid her from going anywhere. In her lucid moments, Rinoa got quieter, withdrawing into herself bit by bit and refusing to explain the curious trances.

            Squall tried to make peace with Delyn, slowly and with Zell's help. Rinoa's trances got more frequent.

            Thus stood the state of affairs.

            "…And he says he doesn't hate you, not really, he just doesn't like to be pushed around any more. 'Seems he's had quiet enough of that already, mind you. Don't you worry, Squall—" flashfire grin, impish "—he's just in that rebellious adolescent stage. Just don't try to make him into Squall-the-Second, and you're on the right track."

            They made an odd pair, the tall Commander and the stocky Second-in-Command. Odd, that the boy that most irritated Squall when he was young had developed into his best friend. The years had had many surprises. Quistis, former instructor, confessing that she had felt close to breaking, training and sending students to fight and perhaps die. She was retired now, a Garden noncom, happily serving advisory duty. Irvine, ever the flirt, the first to marry. By all accounts they'd rushed into it, Ceresia born not even a year, post-Ultimecia. Zell, shy around girls, engaging in a succession of affairs, and still staying boyish in manner and in looks.

            "Whatever."

            And _that_ was why they made a good pair. Squall was the (still) darkly handsome (but married) Commander, distant and, well, commanding. Zell was the down-to-earth one, the one you could come and tell your problems to, having ditched the vertical hairstyle for something more dignified, but still retaining the boyish, laid-back humor that was something of a trademark of his now-a-days.

            "Come _on_," Zell exclaimed, punching his Commander in the arm. "Liven _up_ a little, won't you? You've been as dark as a lowering storm since that son of your got a burr up his arse about SeeD-ship."

            "It's not that," Squall relented, running one hand through thick brown hair. Here was a man at his prime, old enough to be experienced, but young enough to retain speed and strength. "It's Rinoa," he admitted, brow creasing into a frown. "You know how she's been lately—"

            Zell sobered at that, and they walked in companionable silence for a while before he offered, "She'll get better. Have faith."

            Squall nodded, then added softly, "I just wish Matron were here; she'd know…"

            Edea was lost to them, and to all other mortals, and Zell sighed, laying one hand on Squall's shoulder.

            They reached the elevator soon enough, Squall parting ways from Zell to go to his office. The martial artist had an appointment elsewhere—the job of Garden Second-in-Command involved more hands-on work than that of the Commander, which was generally spent mired in paperwork. It made Squall long for his SeeD days sometimes, hard clean fighting and nothing else, but he did find fulfillment in his work, in being head of this enormous family. He'd be happier if he wasn't in the limelight quite so often, though.

            He'd meant to look for Rinoa; she wasn't in the office. He headed back down to the dormitories, where Nida and assorted other people said she had been heading. He found her easily enough—the tangible vibration of her singing (almost a spell—he did not want to think) resounded down the hallways. The closer he got to her location, the more the sound ceased becoming _sound_ and metamorphosed into force, like standing too close to a boom box except that there was no tangible increase in volume. The vibrations shivered up his body from the floor, partnering his heartbeat, a melody that was as unsettling as it was strange.

            When he reached out to punch the access code, the keys slipped from under his fingers, reality warping like taffy. Squall had to take a moment to calm himself down. When he next reached out, the keys were solid.

            Rinoa was sitting in the center of what had been his dorm room, seventeen years and a lifetime ago. This close, the song seemed to meld with his flesh, making his ears tingle. Her lips seemed barely to move at all, eyes wide and gone from hazel to gold, staring into the distance. She would have looked normal, seated on the floor, hands folded in her lap, if not for the incessant singing.

            "Rinoa?" Squall called tentatively, stepping over. She watched him mildly as he edged closer, not daring to touch her for fear of being slapped away with a spell like so many times before. When he reached Rinoa, Squall stepped gingerly to her left and junctioned Shiva, casting a quick shell in case Rinoa chose to lash out, before he reached out and tapped her shoulder gently, calling her name again.

            It was the wrong thing to do.

            The young sorceress rose with a fluid grace, inhumanely fast. One hand thrust towards his chest (Squall tasted ice, memories unreeling in a flare of mage-gold eyes) and he was airborne quite suddenly, shell spell cascading magic in sparks around him as Rinoa's blast of magic chewed through the wall separating his dorm from the Training Center (four-foot thick magic-resistant insulated reinforced titanium-and-duranel, to withstand T-Rexaurs banging from the other side), bearing him along with it. The shell collapsed as he picked himself up gingerly among debris and rubble amid near-tropical heat, peripheral vision noting two stunned-looking figures crumpled near each other. A flare of cool blue light lit the area as the Lion rose to face his Sorceress.

            Rinoa looked incongruously pretty, magic-sparks flaring at her fingertips, eyes a lambent gold. The streaks of gold in her hair flared equally bright, dark brown hair cascading to her waist and flying free. On close inspection, her eyes seemed pools of gold rimmed by black and white, eyelashes and skin, and all the more startling for it. She had lost none of her beauty as she grew older, merely tempered innocent prettiness with experienced maturity. Sorceresses aged slow and lived long, then they went up in fire, as the magic that roiled in their blood became too much for mortal, aging flesh.

            Squall remembered Edea, Matron; dread sorceress, mother like no one else.

            He lifted the blade blessed—or cursed—with his name.__

            Rinoa's bolt caught him right in the heart, lodged in his chest. It burned cold, sorceress ice. Clarity came to him, memories: clean frigid taste of ice, coppery-iron taste of blood, crunch of gravel; Edea's face, Rinoa's—startled as she was now, gold fading from her eyes as she reached out, as if to reclaim the missile. "_It's all right if you're the one who kills me_…" Who had said it? Her? No matter; it was _meant_ for him, like ice. He felt the pull of magic, dragging him back; but the ice slid him on, and in the end he laid a ghost-kiss on Rinoa—her magic?—and let the ice take him.


	7. relight

relight

[llyse]

             "Say _what_?" Seifer Almasy surprised looked oddly boyish, dignity forgotten as he leaned across the counter, slamming one palm on the rough wood. One would never guess that he had just been assaulted to within an inch of his life one month ago, what with the way he was carrying on now, fighting and arguing as usual.

            _Hand me the answer or I'll hand you your head, Fujin thought, laughing silently. _And there I was thinking he'd actually gotten _humble. Not that Seifer Almasy was ever _humble_. When hit by a wave one could either give in and allow it to sweep one Hyne-knew-where, or try to swim. Or one could drown. Seifer had walked away more than once with his pride bruised but intact, arrogance replaced by a quiet confidence hard-earned after weeks of struggling with himself. Sometimes his old arrogance reasserted itself, though._

            "Didn't you hear?"  _Where have you been, the unspoken thought. "Sorceress Rinoa went mad an' killed Commander Squall."_

            Seifer grunted as if struck, Jeffren continuing to speak. "Just goes t'show that you can't trust them sorceresses." He spat in a corner. "Filthy two-timing bitches."

            "And here I thought some were worshipping her as the new Hyne," the one-time sorceress' knight muttered. Jeffren laughed. Fujin would have, too, if the issue at hand were not so serious. Being a sorceress was easily a double-sided coin, like being a hero. You were feted and worshipped, and behind your back people plotted, and if the slightest _whiff_ of wrongdoing reached public ears, a few dozen people would leap out with 'I told you so's primed. People without power were always ready to believe that those with power would misuse it, just like they believed that they themselves would make better use of that same power.

            "They've laid the Commander out in state—anyone that wants to can go see 'im."

            _And, Fujin thought, _that_. Leonhart would become a hero, a martyr, the brave Commander and father dying in defense of his children. Heartily would become the evil seducing Sorceress, corrupted by her power, using the hero to her dastardly ends and discarding him when she was done. All Leonhart's defects glossed over, all Heartilly's virtues likewise. Never mind that they had loved each other, that they had been husband and wife. The wars were probably being wages in the newslists now, pro-sorceress versus anti-sorceress. "Debate" would probably be too civilized a word for it. This would be a verbal brawl._

            Seifer nodded, the look in his eyes indicating that he was thinking, flecks of gray shimmering in green eyes. Jeffren yawned, counting out the gil owed them for monster-hunting. There had been no work readily available for an unemployed knight and his squire, and the call from Esthar for monster-hunters had been a godsend. The job had stuck. It was a simple life, and it suited them perfectly.

            "Here." Jeffren passed the gil over, and Seifer riffled through it distractedly, preoccupied. Fujin narrowed a maroon eye. He couldn't be thinking—

            "I'm going," the man said out in the street. Fujin didn't sigh; that was beneath her. She twitched her sleeves down, glaring at Seifer.

            "Idiot."

            "Yes well, we're at peace. They aren't gonna fall on me and tear me apart." He slanted gray-green eyes at her. "We were rivals. I don't suppose you really had a rival, Fuj, but it means a lot, the way we were. I have to see how he's like, now. I _have_ to pay my respects. It's just something I gotta do—"

            _How little he knows._

            "Help Heartilly?"

            Seifer twitched at _his_ shirt. "Yes," he said simply. Damn. It was his dream, she could see it in the light rekindling in his eyes. For all that he had said that he needed no dreams, it was _there_, pile of dry tinder, just waiting to be relit. This was the perfect opportunity. Sometimes Fujin wished that she could just tie him up and lock him away somewhere until the tinder dried up and blew away in the wind. Sometimes Fujin wished that she could summon that wind.

            He would go. Fujin would go with him, of course. It was what he did.

            Garden was decked in shadow, black mourning swathed over the walls. Its most famous, most celebrated commander was lost. Balamb town was out in force, dressed in dark colors. Seifer, contrary as always, wore a white shirt, with black trousers as a concession to Squall. He carried a long bundle wrapped in gray cloth, content unknown. Fujin was a quiet shadow in gray shirt and dark trousers. Nobody recognized them; people stared at Seifer only because he wore white, the tale of the Lion and his rival long-forgotten, and no one made the connection between the sorceress' knight and this strapping man, even with the slender pale-haired woman at his side.

            They didn't check for weapons; Seifer and Fujin wandered back into the Garden that had been their home for half their lives virtually unchallenged. It hadn't changed much—just the swathing on the walls, and the students in Garden dark brown and black. The biggest crowd surrounded the elevators; Squall—his body—had been laid out in the living room of what had been is quarters. There were SeeDs guarding the lifts, controlling the throng. Seifer took one look at the crowd and made for the cafeteria. 

            Not to eat; there was a little-used service stairway from the cafeteria to the second floor, that they had used three lifetimes ago (and accompanied by he who had been so dark of mind, and exceedingly bright of spirit) to sneak upstairs and downstairs after curfew when faculty guarded the 'lifts. The cafeteria was crowded with people, not all of whom were Garden personnel. Through _this_ throng the two moved; the service stairway was unguarded—perhaps they thought that nobody knew about it.

            At the door to the office Seifer hesitated; there was no one nearby, and Fujin laid a hand on her friend's shoulder.

            "Return?" Her word seemed to galvanize him. Seifer tapped the doorpad, the door sliding open smoothly. The office beyond wasn't quite as packed as the elevator area downstairs, the people in the room turning to look at Seifer, then ignoring him. The SeeDs guarding the door stared longer, conferred with each other, and then one of them thumbed the doorpad and vanished inside. The other SeeD went back to watching the people, and covertly watching Seifer. Fujin thought that he looked vaguely familiar.

            The door hissed open again, and someone exited to be greeted by calls of "Commander Zell." _Commander_ Zell. Fujin laughed to herself. How the times had changed them. If anyone had told her eighteen years past that Zell would become Commander of Garden, Fujin would have laughed herself silly… where no one could see, of course.

            Zell stomped through the small crowd and came to a halt in front of Seifer. "What are you doing here?" he asked, equably enough. The old Zell would have been attempting to punch Seifer.

            "Paying my respects," Seifer responded, just as equable. "Not illegal, is it?"

            Zell sighed. "No, not really." He picked his way back through the crowd, Seifer in his wake, Fujin in Seifer's wake. The door opened, the vaguely familiar SeeD was ushered inside, two others came out to take their place, five people were shooed out, and then Zell led the two former enemies of his inside.

            Leonhart didn't look that much different from the brooding young man he had been. He looked more powerful, broader across the shoulders, slightly taller, less brooding. There was no gray in his dark hair, no lines on his face. This, perhaps, was the way heroes were supposed to die, powerful and unmarked, in the prime of life, before the toll that aging exacted became obvious. It would be better if Squall's body vanished, too. Then everyone could remember him as he _was_, and legends could be scribed about how he was not dead, only vanished, and would reappear when Garden was in danger, or some mystical mythical crap like that. Someone had dressed him in a Garden uniform, black-and-gold, Lionheart at his side. 

            Fujin saluted him solemnly, warrior to warrior. Squall and Fujin had always shared a kind of understanding that did not extend to friendship. Even during Seifer's dreaming days, when each would have struck the other down without a qualm, Fujin had understood that Squall had to fight for his Garden. Likewise, he had understood that she had to fight for her love. They were warriors. Emotion had no business in a fight, not Zell's enthusiasm, not Rinoa's idealism, not Seifer's fury. Emotion gave strength, and took reason; granted endurance and robbed consideration. Better by far to be rid of the whole lot.

            Seifer stared down at his long-time rival, sober. Finally he held out the long bundle, unwrapping it to reveal a dark-gray gunblade, lovingly polished, triangular and narrow, blade still wickedly sharp. They all recognized it, of course. Fujin had thought it lost, sold for gil. She had been _sure_ that it had been sold for gil. Seifer's face was inscrutable when she shot a glance at him.

            "There was a time when I wanted to bury this in you," Seifer said, quiet, holding the gunblade almost lovingly. "Now, I think, I'll bury it with you." He laid Hyperion beside Squall, almost reverent.

            "Well?" Zell asked, hands on hips. Fujin glanced around the room unobtrusively. _This_ was _Leonhart's_ living room? The room was liberally littered with flowers, in bouquets, vases, jugs, even a couple of wilted-looking flowers (_roses, of all things) stuck in a cup full of water. While these were obviously later additions, the bright colors of the curtains and furniture showed Rinoa's hand. The only sign of 'Squall' appeared to be a pair of crossed swords hung on the wall. Aside from Zell, Xu and Nida stood near the windows, conversing quietly and apparently paying no heed to the people around the bier, although Xu's left hand was on the hilt of one of her daggers, and Nida kept twitching the sling that held his shotgun. Two people stood near the door, a young man who looked like he was in shock, and a young woman who kept trying to talk to him._

            "Well what?"

            "What now, Seifer?" Zell repeated. "Now that Squall's dead, where do you go? What do you do?"

            "Do? Go?" The ex-sorceress' knight laughed, something of his young self in the way he tossed his head proudly and laughed, uncaring. "I'll go where I've always gone, I'll do what I've always done, Zell. Squall's no shackle to set me free."

            "You finally call him by name?" Xu put in from the window.

            "When did I last not call Zell, Zell, Xu-darling?" Seifer retorted.

            ­_Eighteen years,_ Fujin thought. _Eighteen years is a long time. Seifer has no need to belittle anyone else to prove his own strength, any more. He's comfortable with who he is, and what he is._

            "So," Seifer said, cutting the reminiscing short. "Where's Rinoa."

            "Still in the Training Center." Zell looked uncomfortable. "She was kind of in shock after… killing Squall. Delyn and Ceresia carried him out of there. Rinoa wouldn't come."

            "All right." Seifer stalked towards the door. "I'm going to get her."

            Fujin missed old times, often. Not Seifer dreaming, no, nor Edea, not the destructive rivalry, the Lion and the Dark Knight. She missed the clean fighting, when every sweep of a blade was not weighted with a multitude of sins, and they could form a protective circle, or attacking wedge. In short, she missed the third member of their party, dark skin and bright smile and heavy, comforting presence in battle. He was never a killer, was Raijin: his choice of weapon indicated that. 

            Their little party was three as they stepped out of the elevator, the young familiar-looking SeeD having joined them as the doors were closing. He was silent, knuckles white on the hilts of two handguns. Fujin said nothing. Seifer measured him with a gaze, accepted the gunblade the other handed him (a fine-looking weapon, but a little too flashy for Fujin, spraying light every which way), and said nothing. Having just confronted Leonhart's imposing dead presence, Fujin wondered if this boy was his son. They certainly looked alike.

            The party was four as they walked into the corridor to the Training Center, as a young brunette came charging down the corridor behind them and pulled to a stop beside the young man, dark-green eyes challenging them to stop her. Seifer glanced her way mildly.

            "In battle," he said, "two's company, three's a party and four's a crowd."

            The girl glared.

            The young man patted her arm, and said something soft, of which Fujin caught only 'Sia', and 'alright'. The young woman turned the glare on him, then sighed. "Take care of yourself, Delyn," she snapped, and ran back to rejoin Zell, Nida and Xeu, who had just appeared at the entrance, and did not seem to mind having four people in a party.

            "Delyn," mused Seifer. "Delyn—Raine—"

            "Shut up," Delyn said, without rancor.

            Seifer raised an eyebrow. "Don't like it?"

            "Don't want to be judged by it!" Delyn snapped, then lapsed into silence. 

            The bone-rattling roar of a T-Rexaur met them at the entrance to the Training Center, and a blast of noise that sounded like a Thundaga. It was times like this that Fujin sorely missed Pandemona, the only Guardian Force she had ever owned, stolen from her by Leonhart. She wondered if the Guardian lay within Leonhart still, sealed in by crumbling flesh. After the confirmation of the reports of memory loss due to GF usage, Balamb Garden had decided to issue a warning, but no ban on their summoning. Wise of them, really, at a time when there was an uprising in Deling to deal with, and the Esthar monsters. Given a chance between memory loss and death, Fujin _would_ choose memory loss, easily.

            The blast of hot, wet air hit them in the face as Delyn triggered the locked doorpad for the left gate, and they charged through, followed by Zell and company. Four embattled SeeDs were facing a T-Rexaur that looked like it had been raised on steroids. Zell tossed something to her; Fujin caught it instinctively. Seifer and Delyn had already charged into the fray, dodging sweeps of the T-Rexaur's muscular tail. She glanced down at the silvery orb gleaming in her palm, and smiled.

            Wind scythed into the T-Rexaur, maddening it; in swiped at the invisible knives raking it head to clawed toes. Fujin, magic singing in her veins, wondered if it was supposed to be this easy, frost-wind in her mind, as if Pandemona was welcoming her after all these years. Her physical body was not at the scene, of course, but her mind rode the winds, and bent them away from her allies and friends, and she _knew_ as the giant reptile howled and stumbled, slashed to the bone, and went down.

            Fujin was tired when she rematerialized on the physical plane, the price Pandemona extracted form its wielder no matter how eagerly the Guardian leapt to mind, but her strength returned easily enough.

            Zell (and the others; but not Seifer) were staring at her with a look bordering on awe—this woman who raised the Wind-God, and rode it—Zell said, "I'm glad you didn't use it on _us_." What he meant was _back when we used to fight_, Fujin understood.

            "First time," she admitted, closing her fingers around the silver-orb and stashing it into one of her pockets. She had summoned Pandemona before, memory faded but bright still through the layer of time, and it had never been like this. The blade winds, Fujin thought, remembering, and even the Guardian had changed—it had been asexual, emotionless; the sense Fujin had of it now was indisputably _female_, and imbued with a protectiveness that surprised her. 

            They split again, Fujin and Delyn flanking Seifer to range slightly ahead, the girl who seemed to be named Sia and Nida and Xu attaching themselves to Zell without comment. The SeeDs who had first fought the T-Rexaur had retreated to guard the gate.

            "It was a woman." The voice startled Fujin slightly; sound, where there had been silence. Even the Training Center around them seemed quiet, although Fujin _knew_ that there were things out there watching them, waiting. The death of the T-Rexaur had given them pause, but they would be back once they recovered their nerve. She slanted the one eye to stare at the slender young man, Leonhart's son, who walked beside her, both hands on the hilts of his handguns. He _had_ to be Leonhart's son, he looked too much like his parents. Fujin remembered the boy's vehement response to Seifer's calling him by his full name—it said a lot, really.

            "It was a woman. Pandemona. When you summoned it. I've never seen it like that before." Delyn twitched as he said it, as if he expected to be condemned him for it.

            Seifer turned to look at him, surprise on his face. "That was Pandemona? How do you know?"

            Delyn blinked. "I… just know. I saw Commander Leonhart summon, once," he added hastily. Commander Leonhart? Relations in the family did not seem as close as it might have looked.

            "Well, _I've_ seen Fuj summon it dozens of times, and it's never looked like _that_—" 

            Conversation was derailed as a pair of Toramas—_Toramas, in the Training Center?_—leapt out of the bushes at them. Fujin chose not to use Pandemona, shuriken flying. She remembered Edea, remembered the warning the woman had given a little silver-haired girl in a darkened Garden. _You hold the potential to be more than you are. Comport yourself carefully amongst sorceresses, for they hold the key to changing your future._ What Edea had _meant_ was that Fujin had sorceress potential, which manifested itself as a heightened affinity for GFs and magic, some odd senses, and the certainty that should a sorceress die nearby, the power would be drawn to her surely as iron fillings to a lodestone. Edea had deliberately gathered children with magic-potential at her orphanage, the future sorceresses and knights. Perhaps Delyn, the son of sorceress and knight, was possessed of power or sense beyond mere _potential_. 

            "How _did_ you do that, Fuj?" Seifer questioned, after the battle. Fujin said the only thing she _could_ say.

            "Don't know."

            _It's your Ultimate Summon,_ Edea had said, ignoring the belligerent look from the little girl. _Perhaps it is fate, that you lost an eye gaining this. One day you will be mature enough, attuned enough to it to unlock the Guardian's full power. It is _yours_, as much as any Guardian can be. Because your personalities, your _souls_ mesh so. Perhaps she was an ancestor of yours, or you yourself in an earlier incarnation. _One hand on the child's shoulder, attempted unaccepted comfort. _You don't know? Most don't. Guardian Forces are sorceress souls, bound by power and will, so old that they remember not the reason they stayed behind, and shaped by the thoughts of those living nearby. Only in their Ultimate Form do they shed the illusion cast by others, and revert to their original appearance. _

The center of the storm loomed up ahead, the breach in the wall to the dormitories. The monsters were more concentrated, and they had to fight nearly non-stop to get to the area. Fujin wondered: was Rinoa's presence or power somehow feeding or creating the monsters? Inside the circle, it was calm—too calm. The monsters prowled outside, fading into the bushes.

            "Be careful," Zell warned. Leonhart's demise lay heavy on everyone.

            Fujin drew-cast Shell and Protect from some of the very convenient monsters prowling around the edges of the circle on everyone; Sia was doing the same. Heartilly was seated on the rubble, eyes closed, face ghost-pale beneath too-dark hair. The golden strands in the hair glowed lambent. She opened her eyes as they approached, molten gold and quite sane, and entirely dead.

            Rinoa Heartilly spread her arms and said, "Kill me."

            Fujin raised her shuriken almost unwillingly, compelled by the sorceress' deceptively simple words, recognizing the plea in Heartilly's brown-turned-inhuman eyes. _Kill me, before I destroy—_Yet something in her railed at cutting down this soul-dead woman, this sorceress-princess who should have lived happily ever after with her knight-prince—

            Seifer stayed her hand, fire-warmth, fever-warmth on her wrist. The woman lowered her weapon, single eye meeting double, questioning.

            "This is my duty," the knight (for knight he was now, dark as he was) said. This wasn't the Dream, that damnable hook in his soul that left him vulnerable. Or rather, it was the same, only matured and grown up to read "­_help_ my sorceress when she _needs_ me". No glory, just compassion. Fujin felt him brush past her, felt his warmth. She could hate Rinoa for it, but there was nothing to hate in that ash-souled woman. 

            No matter what, Seifer always went back to his sorceress, a moth to flame.

            He raised gunblade then, the light-spraying, barbarically beautiful blade that Delyn had given him. He should have brought Hyperion, Fujin thought dizzily, it was more suited to killing a sorceress. This one was too bright, too beautiful. The world contracted to _here_ (earth and air, Zell tense, Delyn frozen, Sia frozen, Seifer and sword and Rinoa) and _now_ (2:15 pm on a sunny day 15th Month of Sun 1537 years after Hyne's Ascension, seconds a force of nature).

            The blade descended.

            Pandemona tore out of Fujin with a ferocity that stunned, her mind swept on a tide of wind, senses near-overwhelmed as her physical body, and Rinoa's vanished and the blade winds tore full on the unprotected figure of Seifer Almasy. Fujin's shell spell saved him, wind diffusing over the protective sphere. She could see it weakening, thinning; then the percussive roar of Iftrit shook the trees as the Guardian seared out of Zell, and he, Sia and Delyn shimmered into the other plane. Seifer flung up both hands as the sea of fire crashed over him, and then Fujin was solid again, on her knees, hands braced against the ground.

            It was unprecedented, unheard of, impossible—

            Guardians were devastating, but in a small area. A circle of earth and foliage roughly five meters in diameter was cut and scorched, and beyond it the monsters kept prowling. Someone was screaming; it couldn't be her, Fujin did _not_ scream—but her throat was hoarse and aching, and when she closed her mouth the screaming stopped. The world was disconnected as she lurched to her feet and fell to her knees beside the burnt and slashed thing that was her posse leader, her friend, her lover—

            Seifer was alive, barely. Rinoa, sobbing, poured Curaga after Curaga into him a green tide to counteract the red-and-black that covered most of him. Fujin couldn't _find_ Pandemona, in the recesses of her soul; the Guardian was _gone_. She could only watch as Rinoa swept power into Seifer. She had never felt so useless in her life.

            She could hate Rinoa for it, but there was nothing in Fujin left to hate.

A/N 24/4=Whoa, fun. I don't like FF8 any more (the game, no), uh huh, but fic-writing for it is still fun. Unfortunately, I kept forgetting that this was supposed to be eighteen years post-game, and I kept writing Seif and Fuj as youngsters. Darn. –cough, cough- _"Guardians are sorceress souls—"_ That's an expansion of an idea I started in _Bringing the Wind Home_, and it's getting to be more fun than I ever thought it would be. Cheer me, yay.


	8. awaken to thy strength

awaken to thy strength

[llyse]

            He swore he would never cry. Tears were an expression of emotion, a sign of weakness. It was not that he was too strong to show weakness, no, he was weak. He _knew_ his weakness, to the core of his heart. It was because he was _weak_ that he had to train, to work harder, to be all the stronger to hide that damnable weakness of his. He felt, that was his weakness. He could not overcome emotion to do what he must. But he had his strength. His devotion, his dream. It fed him, kept him going. And one day devotion would overcome emotion. 

            Crying, he heard. It pierced his dreams, brought him wakeful into dreary and drizzling reality from his dreams of honor and glory; the soft sobbing, mournful sound made it impossible for him to close his eyes, much less sleep. He wondered: did it not say in the books that he read, that the greatest people always came from the most sordid, the most ridiculed beginnings? The hardships taught them to endure, to have faith, honed and tempered them to lean dark steel, tough and sharp and unbreakable. He almost smiled. Even the weeping barely dampened his hope. He was miserable, now. He would soar, later.

            The day he left it drizzled, too. The woman he refused to call mother crouched mindlessly in the small shelter they called him, sobbing to herself. He had often wondered if she was insane, these days. She would wake in the morning, and go to her slave-work; she would return late at night with food, and sob till dawn. He wondered if she slept. He left because he saw light: the man had invited him to join his group; it was better than running on the streets every day, watching what he could not have. He promised himself: he would win free of these streets someday. He would soar.

            He learned of glory, from the legends his mother told him. Hyne. Glorious sorceresses. That was true soaring.

            It was a message. Deling, its squalid filthy streets and dark slums, was beginning to feel like home. The gang loved him. They were like his family. He thought he loved them. He lost sight of the glory, but the glory found him. It came in the form of the book. It shone at him from the cover of a book on medieval symbolism; it stole his soul, and he immediately stole the book. It recalled him to his true cause—serving the glory—and although there was nothing in the book that mentioned it save the cover art (his, it was his, he put it on all his clothing—the emblem of the knight) and he thought so hard about it that he carelessly let himself get caught.

            It dripped in the dungeons too, tears from the wall. Alright, so it was not a real dungeon, but so what? It was dark, it dripped, it had a barred window and stone walls and a small pallet on the floor, what did it matter if they called it a jail, not a dungeon. It was storming outside, the roof leaking and rain spattering in the small window when _she_ came. She had dark clothing and dark hair but she seemed to shine, almost shimmering in a way he had never seen. He thought she was Glory, then. He thought he could soar.

            The orphanage was small but clean, simple but full of love. It's only value to him was that it gave him a big area to run around in, and a rival. All of the children there had that _glow_ around her, Quistis' soft motherly warmth, Zell's quicksilver glitter, Selphie's fluttering light, Irvine's faint shine, and the hard-edged halo that Squall possessed. He saw it when he looked in the mirror, the same hard glittery halo as Squall. He determined, that since Glory was not here as he thought, it had to be waiting somewhere. He would train himself to be worthy of it, and train he did. He ran, all along the beaches, up and down the lighthouse stairs, in and out of the orphanage. He fought Squall until Edea had to have him sleep in the living room. He wanted to soar.

            In the Garden of blood-flowers he found the two. The girl drew him at once, as much for the measuring way her cool gaze raked over him as for the swirling eddies of light that curled around her like winds in a storm. Wind, he later realized, was an apt analogy when it came to her. She had a temper like the storm, throwing tantrums one moment, all biddable placidity the next. They were glorious together, mastering weaponswork and spell theory swiftly, and, having no need for homework, ran all over the place. They talked, laughed, fought: they were _kindred_. To everyone else Fujin said little and paid less attention, but with him she loosed the barriers. 

            She cried when the Guardian took her eye. Headstrong, confident, the two of them had snuck out of a summer training camp on the Timber plains to pursue rumor of a Guardian Force haunting a forest. They found it; or rather it found them, when they had been stumbling lost through that forest and the silvery Guardian had swept from nowhere, winds swirling. A single angled slash opened Fujin's face to the bone, taking out one eye; and then the Guardian surrendered to her. Garden technology healed the slash without scar, but could not grow an eye. She, too, never cried after that, and grew quiet, even with him. Then Raijin came, lightning-quick scatters of light, and rounded out their group perfectly. He almost forget his dream of soaring.

            He met Glory's child during the summer, pure raw fire-force (Squall felt it too, he knew). She had devotion to match his. She was part of Glory, and he loved her for that.

            Glory. He found Glory. His one strength, his belief, his faith, his devotion to his Dream, finally overcame his weakness. He _forgot_ his weakness. The Glory took him to Her bosom, and he forgot everything but Her. The formless dreams of his childhood come true—he had risen from the squalor and filth of his beginnings in the mud to the light of the Heavens. It was even better when Glory's child, that beautiful beautiful girl, became Glory. Glory burnt into Glory, and Glory—

            --Fell.

            The lies and traps that twisted his brain took months to unravel, winding truth from the lies and mutilations and perversions that laced his memories. Fujin and Raijin helped where they could, especially Fuj—he knew it tore at her heart to see him fighting with himself. He was well aware of his former second-in-command, current friend's feelings when it came to him—but—

            (he had known the gunblade was _his_ the moment he set eyes on it: Hyperion, sun-god, light—and when it came time to sell it, he could _not_—he sold everything he could sell, and it was not enough—he found Edea, and went as far as to beg, pride set aside—and still the boy died. Edea could do nothing. The blade, he knew, had to go, but not for gil. Never for cheap gil.)

            The glory was still there, seething at the back of his mind. It grumbled when he was mugged, it growled when he killed monsters for a living, it snarled when he returned to Garden. It woke, tendrils of warmth seeping through his brain, when he saw Rinoa, full Glory, power so blinding it left room for nothing else. Glory there, but different. He wanted to help her, because she needed help, because she was so lost and dead—partner, not slave.

            Tears woke him; tears he saw, dripping on his shirt. Rinoa smiled, teary, but his eyes sought Fujin first. His strength had overcome his weakness, he knew. His love had overcome his devotion. That was his true strength.


	9. time's teachings

time's teachings

[llyse]

            _Upside-down._

            The little girl had loved it; her father had called it inverted gravity, whatever that meant, as he swung her around and around by the feet and her mother had yelled to put the child down before she gets hurt and stop saying that stupid senseless phrase.

            The young woman hated it; it was out of control, and the man who had whirled her and the woman who had yelled were gone, the latter dead and the former gone cold stone statue to where he never spoke to her or came back to see her because she _did_ so look like her mother. (unfortunately).

            The world was topsy-turvy, spinning around, and when she closed her eyes and reopened them she almost expected to see the ceiling in the place of the floor. The Commander dead, killed by his wife. Almasy, the disgraced, returned, near-dead in the infirmary. His flunky in the Garden. Delyn gone somewhere to sulk. Ceres with nothing to do but think, and she did _not_ like thinking. 

            She didn't understand Delyn. Her lover was strange these days, quiet and brooding and… well, very much like the accounts of Commander Leonhart back when he was young. Ceres liked Delyn the way he was, polite and rather shy with most people, hot-tempered and prone to fighting when he was with her. Now he kept going to out-of-the-way places to think things over, and he never told Ceres what he thought. It drove her up the wall. Well, right, his mother _had_ gone mad and killed his father, but… she just didn't understand him.

            The young woman glared at the gray-clad back in front of her, resentment simmering. Why the hell did _she_ have to get stuck "escorting" Almasy's unpaid slave around the Garden? Ceres didn't growl, but she ran a hand up the smooth metal shaft of her spear. The weapon was quick and elegant, the way she liked it, with the foot-long metal handle and the muted-blue shaft that formed when she hit the activation button. The blade was more scythe than spear, but Ceres did _not_ like calling her weapon a scythe. It reminded her too much of the Grim Reaper, and his intimate acquaintance with her family.

            "You don't have to follow me if you don't want to." Fujin said mildly, glancing back at the seething girl.

            "What, you can actually talk?" Ceres snapped. Fujin just smiled, continuing to walk, Ceres trailing behind like some obedient dog. Fujin took a circuitous route that seemed designed to irritate Ceres, before finally ending up before Delyn's old room. The older woman tapped on the door, did not wait for an answer, triggered the doorplate and strode right in. Ceres' brows drew into a worse frown than before. Why did _she_ have access to Delyn's old rooms?

            Ceres was only marginally pleased when Delyn leapt out of the recess beside the door and attempted to punch Fujin. She did nothing to help either fighter. Delyn could hold his own against most fighters, and the bitch could fight her own battles. Which she did, with breathtaking ease. Ceres assumed that a Garden-trained fighter ought to be good, but she had not expected Fujin to retain her old skills, and she had not paid attention when they had been fighting in the Training Center, having been concentrating on keeping herself alive. The woman whipped out her shuriken (Ceres knew worry) but she only used it to parry, and then to bind Delyn's fists before she kicked his feet out from under him.

            Ceres started forward, but Fujin released Delyn before Ceres got a chance to whack her. Which was really too bad, because Ceres really felt like whacking her. Delyn picked himself off the floor, groaning.

            "What is it?" the young man snarled, none too gracious.

            "Stop sulking." Fujin said crisply. Ceres shot her a sideways glance. That was _her_ phrase. Baiting Delyn was one of Ceres' pastimes, and it usually ended with them fighting. Sometimes she wondered if they weren't so much lovers as mutual punchbags.

            Delyn eyed Fujin, with the same kind of _look_ he usually gave Ceres when she said something that provoked but did not merit a physical reply. "You sound like Ceres," he said sullenly. Said girl switched her glare to him. "If you _were_ Ceres, I'd hit you."

            Fujin snorted. "Pick yourself up and go help Quistis."

            "With what?"

            "Wall reconstruction."

            "_What?"_

            "The broken wall. Training Center."

            Muttering, Delyn headed off down the corridor. Obviously he saw no wisdom in refusing. Fujin after a glance around the room, closed the door and went in the opposite direction from Delyn. Ceres, bound by her orders, trailed her. Fujin's route looked familiar, and Ceres' suspicions were confirmed when the older woman unlocked one door out of the many lining the walls, walked through the living room of the apartment that Ceres shared with Delyn and strode into Ceres' room as if she owned the damn place. Ceres stopped in the doorway, hands on hips as she watched Almasy's flunky stroll through her room like she was window-shopping, assessing everything with a critical eye.

            "What are you doing?"

            Fujin muttered something to herself.

            "_What are you doing, _dammit_?"_

            Fujin tested the edge of the ornamental (but still-sharp) daggers hanging on the wall. Ceres was on the verge of jumping the lithe woman and pounding her to the ground when Fujin turned to face her, and spoke.

            "Don't be helpless," the woman said, something in her remaining eye shining darkly. Ceres blinked, poleaxed.

            "What?" she managed. Don't be helpless? One hand tightened on the shaft of her spear. She was _not_ helpless.

            Fujin sighed.

            "You feel helpless," the short woman said matter-of-factly. "You're a warrior—" wave of a hand to encompass the room "—you think simple. Fight for those you love, support them. Keep them alive, no? You don't understand what Delyn's going through, and you feel there's nothing you can do to help him."

            "I do _not_!" Damn if she was going to let some pale-haired bitch second-guess her.

            Fujin laughed softly, a bitter sound. She turned to leave the room, holding out one hand to forestall Ceres as the younger woman started to follow. "Don't. Stay here. Think awhile." She smiled. "You don't need to understand him to help him. You just need to be there."

            Perhaps she saw something on Ceres' face.

            "Don't envy me my understanding," she said softly. "There's nothing to envy." Funny, how Fujin had never seemed small before. When Ceres had first seen her, she had been eclipsed by Seifer's sunny glory, but she still held strength in her own way. Now, however, the woman seemed frail and weakened, and in her eyes Ceres saw darkness, a tapestry of layered wounds. The kind of knowledge that Fujin held was the kind that time taught, tattooed into milk-white skin with ink the color of old blood. 

            When the woman had left, Ceres sat on the bed and stared at the wall. She _did_ need to think.


	10. heralding chaos

heralding chaos

[llyse]

            For once, the place was actually a construction site. Quistis (ever the supporter of tidiness and order) had always disapproved of the construction signs and tools scattered around the left side of the Training Center. She used to stay out of it. Now, however, the place was bustling with SeeDs and workers and more tools than ever. Most of the monsters were still around, and from the protective ring of SeeDs surrounding the workers came occasional flashes of light and bursts of noise. Quistis rubbed her forehead, sensing an impending headache. She had command of this ants' nest, Zell yammering something about her being "the only one we can spare with a commanding enough mien to run that lot". In fact, 'that lot' practically ran themselves.

            _Ka-whump!_

            The woman cast a jaundiced eye towards her left, where Squall's young son fought alone with a kind of berserk fury that made the other SeeDs wary of getting too close to him. Quistis shook her head regretfully. Delyn was under quite some stress, but it he kept this rate of spellcasting up he would find himself losing a lot of memories. Perhaps that was his intention.

            Thinking of Delyn invariably made her think of Squall, Rinoa, and—Seifer. She sighed. Seifer was an intrusion, anarchy in an ordered world. She had been irritated by him, and then hated him, and then felt an odd sort of pity for him. Yet for all that, Quistis was a creature of order and structure and nicely-planned schedules. Seifer had probably never planned anything in his life, and now that he was here everything was falling apart. She wished he had not come. He reminded her too much of those old days of war and sorceress-chaos. He seemed to _bring_ it.

            "Herald of chaos," she murmured. As if on cue, her 'com beeped.

            "_Quistis, we need you at the infirmary. Someone's coming to take over from you," Zell squawked through the 'com. No, not squawked, that was not fair to Zell. He had not squawked for years._

            "Miss Trepe?" Again, perfectly on cue. Somebody up there was arranging things, perhaps. It was too bad that He could not arrange it so that all this chaos would not happen to her.

            "Here to replace me?" Quistis turned with a wry smile. "You don't really have to do anything—they'll do it for you." The SeeD smiled back hesitantly, a black-haired man about her height with unusually large eyes. Quistis bowed to him and left. 

            Quistis found the rest of the "gang" in the infirmary, sitting, standing, or pacing around Seifer's bed. Fujin and Rinoa were seated flanking him, Fujin stiff-backed, eyes veiled, Rinoa with hands clasped in what looked like prayer. Zell was the one pacing, while Delyn (Quistis had not even noticed him leave, in the Training Center) stood against the wall, wearing a blank expression. A chastened-looking Ceres entered the room shortly after, and crossed straight to Delyn's side.

            "Since we're all here," Zell began, casting a quick look at Rinoa, who obliged him by looking up and beginning to speak.

            "My powers are growing," the woman said bluntly. "They've been growing ever since I received them, because I hold _all_ the sorceress power left on this planet. It's got worse lately. I—" she faltered, looking down "—I'm not too sure what happened—with Squall—but it was because of me having too much power. It made it too easy to act, to—do—anything. The monsters were me, too. I was trying to get rid of my power and it was the only thing I could think of. And then Seifer—I used enough power saving him, and keeping him alive that I'm here, now…"

            "What do you mean, here now?"

            Rinoa blinked.

            "I was dreaming," she said vaguely. "And I was awake, and I was dreaming while I was awake. I don't know."

            It was Quistis' turn to blink, as she stared at the dark-eyed woman. No—dark-eyed no longer, the pools of gold seemed to suck in light and trap it behind black lashes, leaving her face in pools of shadow.

            "Am I sane?" Rinoa asked, one corner of her lips quirking up. "I'm sane when I'm not dreaming. I'm not dreaming now, I think. If I am, then it doesn't matter if you think I'm insane, because you wouldn't be real."

            _Dear Hyne—what has Rinoa become? With a pang of regret, Quistis recalled the idealistic, bright girl who had spun into their lives and hearts. She had been so happy, so full of dreams; now she seemed like a dream, and the only brightness in her was the swirling eyes and streaks of gold in her hair. Quistis got the impression that if Rinoa wore bright clothing, they would go dark._

            "Seifer," Fujin prodded, hands clenched in her lap.

            "Oh," Rinoa murmured, suddenly sad-looking. "Seifer. He's not dead, but he's not alive. My power's all that's keeping him _here_. He's bound to me, he's—well, I don't know if I can heal him completely."

            "Oh," Quistis said quietly. Oddly enough, the truth raised nothing in her heart. Seifer's fate was no concern of hers. She knew some of the students called her a cold-hearted bitch, but this? Perhaps Seifer brought so much chaos to her life that she would be glad to have him out of it, by any means possible. No, that was unworthy of her. _What am I thinking?_ Perhaps time and space had diminished Seifer in her view of the world.

            Rinoa had lapsed into silence again, and it was Zell's turn to prompt her with, "Your power."

            The sorceress murmured something to herself before looking up, and Quistis felt a chill. What if the young woman was lapsing into dreaming again? It had taken Squall's death to wake her, last. Whose would it take this time?

            It is a terrible thing to be afraid of one's friend.

            "My power," Rinoa said clearly, "will continue to grow. I cannot stop it—you cannot stop it. I have to die."

            Silence in the room.

            It is a terrible thing to plan a friend's death.

            None of them wanted Rinoa to die. Yet, at the same time they all recognized that she _had_ to die, or they all might. Quistis knew despair, gazing on the face of the woman that she—that they had _all_ loved. Who didn't? Although she had been annoying at times, and something of a trial for the professional Quistis, her idealism and innocence touched the heart. They loved her, even if Squall was the one who had fallen _in_ love with her.

            "How?" Ceres asked, voice completely emotionless. They all knew about sorceresses, how they healed in the blink of an eye as the powers contained within their bodies worked to keep them alive. And Rinoa possessed power beyond normal sorceresses, perhaps power rivaling Hyne, as Seifer's fate proved.

            "I intend to drain myself—first by opening a gate to the past, and then by creating a Guardian Force." She waved a hand to forestall the arguments. "I will create a Guardian Force—the only Guardian Force—capable of destroying me. In effect I will be placing my power within the Guardian, and then the Guardian will use that power to destroy me. However, I expect that the other Guardians present will come to my defense, and the resulting catastrophe will be tremendous. Therefore, I intend to travel back in time, to uninhabited lands, to ensure that there be no casualties."

            Rinoa seemed to grow more detached as she spoke, had been growing more detached, words sliding from 'conversation' to something more like 'prophecy'.

            "Is that… necessary?" Delyn choked, the shock plain on his face. "If Mother can drain away her power, won't she be alright? Why do we have to do this?" Zell and Fujin seemed calm, perhaps they already knew. And perhaps they did; Zell was the one who answered Delyn.

            "Sorceresses generate more power when they have less. And before you ask—yes, the more power they have, the less they generate. But by the time Rinoa stored up enough power to stop generating it, she'd be in a homicidal rage."

            "That is _not_ funny." Ceres muttered.

            "But," Quistis queried, "how are you going to _create_ a Guardian? I thought Guardians were—"

            She stopped dead at the looks on the faces of the three around Seifer's bed. Rinoa, already old, looked even older. Zell dropped his gaze. Fujin folded her arms and glared.

            "She's going to use Seifer's soul."


	11. intention of the wind

intention of the wind

[llyse]

            Guardians are sorceress souls, Edea had told her. They are sorceress who, for reasons unknown, choose to bind themselves to the spiritual plane with their power instead of moving on, much like the ghosts of normal people. They hold all their old power and are able to use it freely, unencumbered by mortal limits. They take their shape from the beliefs and thoughts of the people around them, often of mythological creatures.

            There is another way to create a Guardian Force.

            She sits on the right side of the bed. She is pretty, ordinarily so: black hair and round face and eyes that hold mystery. Her darkness is not obvious: in the dim infirmary light her eyes shine gold, or yellow, although the golden streaks in her hair are not quite obvious. Her face is blank, her eyes shadowed, sleeplessness collecting in darkness under her eyes and on her cheeks. We shall call her the Dreamer.

            She sits on the left side of the bed. She is not pretty by ordinary means: gray-white hair and sharp chiseled face and eye that holds anger. She has lost one eye already; the remaining one burns with dark flame as if to make up for it. Her darkness is more obvious: in dim light her pale skin absorbs shadow; she does not glow ivory, but sinks within darkness. Her face is calm, but the tenseness of her body betrays her state of nerves. We shall call her the Seeker.

            He sleeps in the bed between them. He is handsome, or would have been: blond hair and angular face and eyes that hold faith. That is in the past; now he is shrouded in white, for none wish to look upon the ruin that fire has made of him. He does not appear to hold darkness; here is a man at peace, yet who knows what he thinks? His face is relaxed; it is the only part of him spared, or perhaps restored. We shall call him the Sleeper.

            The Sleeper sleeps; the Seeker twitches; the Dreamer watches, and waits—

            At length one of them speaks.

            "Rinoa," says the Seeker, nothing of her moving save slash of pale lips.

            The Dreamer switches the focus of her gaze, taking in the tension that cages the woman opposite her. She is not human, is the Dreamer; she was once, but not any more. In the fire of loss is born something new—something, not cold, but focused. She has a goal, and she will achieve it. Only then can she rest.

            "What is your request?"

            The Seeker is perhaps surprised that the other knows what she seeks. She does not show it. The warrior that she is does not feel suited for a battle such as this, a battle of sorcery, of great powers and emotions where her weapons have no effect. She wishes for a better weapon, something to help with. Although she has counseled others to be content and support without fighting, she cannot stand by. Her lover is beyond the support she can give, now.

            "Magic."

            The Dreamer is, for a while, surprised. She is aware that the woman before her despises the whole unnatural lot.

            "Why?"

            A simple question, and one that the Seeker expects.

            "To protect him."

            She should have expected it.

            "You want me to grant you sorceress powers in the past so that you can sleep to the present and protect him. You're playing with time. And fate, and destiny. Has it occurred to you that you might be tampering with the scheme of things?"

            "I know."

            "It might be foreordained that he suffers."

            "I know."

            "And you still—"

            "I will take any risk."

            The Dreamer sighs.

            "Very well. I promise you this, I will grant you a portion of my power before I die, and seal you in sleep that you may wake yourself when the time comes. Will that satisfy you?"

            "Yes."

            The Dreamer sees the question in her eyes.

            "You need not look out for mine. Protect your own. I—I have affection for him, too… Protect him, and I will be content to let time run its course."

            The Seeker inclines her head. They know each other. They are so different, _were_ so different. Once they were dark and light, light and dark, fighter and mage, realist and idealist. Now they are united in darkness, and loss, and the pain of losing lovers. Now, they understand each other. They are not friends—possibly will never be friends, but they are alike, and they understand that.

            "Thank you," the Seeker says. The Dreamer smiles. 

            The Sleeper awakens.


	12. the future before the past

the future before the past

[llyse]

            The Garden is waiting. Bred for fighting, poised for flight, it and its inhabitants are usually at the ready, but never like now. SeeDs and instructors and noncombatants scramble, making last-day preparations.  Systems are checked, weapons are tested, spells are stored. Messages zip across the globe, warning and questioning and wishing good luck.

            She is watching. Everywhere and nowhere, not even a person, she floats on the winds of change and listen to the people speak. She does not know who she is. Once she was a person, but now she is more, and she does not think about what she has become; it is enough that she watches. This event will start something, she can sense, and she must see it happen.

            In the morning the announcement had gone out to all residents of all three Gardens: prepare for permanent relocation and possible war. Explanations were given, of course, but surprisingly few chose to leave Balamb Garden. Surprising to the leaders; she had heard them discussing it. It did not surprise her: those living here were mostly those with few relatives or friends outside of the Garden. This was their home and family. They would not leave. Sometimes she wonders how she knows this, if at one time in her past she actually lived here in this place of flesh and spilled blood. 

            Rinoa Heartilly, the headmaster of Balamb Garden had said, at the same time as his compatriots in the other Gardens were also explaining, was a sorceress who had too much magic. It was too easy for her to use it: the merest thought, the smallest uncontrolled wish could unleash that power, and Rinoa Heartilly had many wishes. One could _drain_ her magic, but it would regenerate, faster than ever. Fifty years of age was the point at which a sorceress' power peaked before falling, and Rinoa was still far from reaching that age. Already her powers were growing beyond her control. Unimaginable, what point those powers would reach when she turned fifty. She would be as a god.

            Sorceress magic was of two kinds: true-magic, used for spellcasting and healing and other arcane things; and seed-magic, the core that lodged in every sorceress, generated true-magic, and was passed on when a sorceress chose. Rinoa was so sure that her seed-magic would shatter and pass to more people: one person was never supposed to hold that much.

            _Fithos lusec wecos vinosec. The witches need more heirs._

            In Balamb Garden, a man wonders how he will deal with this crisis. 

            The best you can, says his friend, although she too worries. They both smile. 

            The man is a leader, a Commander: he will manage. The woman is strong in situations like these; it is emotions that she cannot handle. They will be fine, the watcher thinks. Out of the headmaster's office she goes, into the corridor; through the lift and down: the place is buzzing with activity, mostly technicians making sure that the Garden will survive the trip through time. Those SeeDs that have something to visit are off visiting it for the last time. 

            There is an empty schoolroom where a woman site. This is where they once studied, in bygone days. Such brightness, then, all their hopes and dreams. Their lives have gone to shadow since, yet still in the rapidly frosting heart of the woman there lies a thread of hope. She is at present content, and calm, and that is all she will be.

             The watcher shivers incorporeally and moves on, too conscious of the strange vibrating split in the air that threatens to--what? She does not know, and has no wish to find out. Watch. Always watch, no more. She spins through the floor of the schoolroom, into a bright room where a boy east alone, lost in thought.

            Onwards then: the infirmary, and the man who lies sleeping, dreaming blissfully. There is no fear in him; he has lost his fear somewhere in the dreams that bring him closure. His is the peace of someone with no options, no agony of choice. There is only one path that he may walk, and he has accepted it. The watcher lingers beside him, visually tracing the line of his jaw, the shape of his body. Perhaps she once knew him (stop thinking). He is light, she thinks (no, don't think!), light exiled to shadow, and it burns him so.

            His companion likewise has no options, but as she sits awake, not needing any rest, her mind roves. She is light, the mother of all, it seems. Yet brightest light casts darkest shadow. There is uncertainty in her, fear and sorrow and despair. The light within her distils these shadows into ebony void, turning what might have been a normal woman into a battleground of purest hate and brightest light. The mother of light looks up and raises her hand in grave salute; confused, the watcher flees.

            North she goes, passing packing SeeDs, and SeeDs helping others to pack. Some are leaving, not wishing to join the permanent exile. The white ones will also stay, she knows; they will stay and fight and protect when the black ones are gone. There is a small dorm room like any other, where a pair of lovers lie together on the bed for one, taking comfort in company. They speak of normal things, quiet and content, bridging the gap that has grown between them these few days. They will need their strength in the years to come, these two.

            The watcher watches as the day flies, and the night, and the Garden too. Few watch it go as it speeds to rendezvous with the other Gardens and leave. Only the watcher lingers, watching it go. She must send it off, for she is the only one who _knows_. For she is the Watcher, and she must watch.

A/N (7/8/2003. typed 10/9): "She is Ultimecia, the Watcher." Yeeeah.


	13. those who were there

those who were there

[llyse]

**1; sleeper.**

There is a Sleeper in the Garden.

            He sleeps the sleep of the peaceful. He has woken; he has spoken, and now he sleeps, content. He has seen his destiny, and it is all he could have wished for. There is a trace of sadness in his heart, at the lover he will leave behind, but he know she understands.

            Once he railed, and fought his destiny, because he did not understand the designs that fate lays down for her chosen. He thought that he was born to glory (and he _is_); he worked to achieve that glory, and in the end he fell, burning in glory, turning to burnt black carbon. But from that carbon is born a diamond. All that has passed, all the shame and anger and pain, all of that has served to bring him here as a diamond, at last worthy of the destiny intended for him. He understands that now. Light burns all the brighter when it is smothered in shadow.

            He sleeps, unknowing as his enemies and comrades ready for battle.

            He does not feel the Garden halt above Centra, deathplace of Hyne.

            He does not see the Gardens that join it.

            He does not hear the words flung to the wind, nor sense the power that warps time.

            He sleeps, and awaits his waking.

**2; sorceress.**

She is a Sorceress.

            Once, that word would have conjured awe and fear and service, people glad to help Hyne's daughters. Although there were rogue sorceresses, who visited pain and death upon the people, those were swiftly suppressed by the other sorceresses and knights, Hyne's _true_ daughters. The image people had of sorceresses were of benevolent protectors, women who used their powers to heal and guide.

            Then came Edea, and the Second Sorceress War.

            Now, the mention of her name comes with an epithet attached like a parasite that will not go away. People look askance at her in the corridors. She is condemned, despised; the fear is still there, but it is leavened with anger.

            She does not ­_care_.

            All her world is white and black. The white of that ever-burning light within her, that sears and scorches through her nerves, begging to be set free. _Demanding. She uses it, keeping her broken knight alive, but there is a wish in her heart that she denies, a wish to set the fire free and fill this broken Garden, this broken world, with light. Because other than the light within her, all was black darkness, the world only a rotting illusion that hid the void beneath. _

            The sorceress stands in the centre of a shadow Garden, rallying her light. She releases it, smiling. For one moment, all is light, and the killers around her squeeze their eyes shut.

            She could kill them where they stand. But she will not. There are things she must do, promises made to herself, and then she will rest in the light.

            She reaches out with Hyneborn fire, and pulls the past to her.

**3; fighter.**

Quistis scrubbed at her face, trying desperately to see with blinded eyes. Rinoa had been standing in the cockpit, Rinoa had done _something_--Guardian-based magesense rocking Quistis back on her heels--and the light had come. It had not been like this back so long ago, when she had been a near-broken girl watching time melt. There was no disorientation, no warping, no odd falling or flying sensation. There was just the light.

            For a moment she thought that Rinoa had finally lost control, had marshalled her powers to put an end to _everything_--and then someone cupped her elbow, steadying her. Whiteness grew black spots which got larger, revealing bits of the world at their center.

            "Where are we?" Zell asked from behind her.

            "Looks like Centra, sir."

            The last spots of black disappeared from her vision as the hand left her elbow, and Zell leaned over the scanning console, swearing incredulously to himself. "It worked," the Commander said, a faint tone of wonder in his voice.

            Rinoa lifted Seifer's body as if it was weightless, stepping forward through the thick glass of the window. 

**4; griever.**

He was lost, floating formless in black non-thought.

            He was waiting for the light. The light had sent him here, he knew, sliding down a slope of slippery ice into this blankness. The light had tried to yank him back, but had failed. So now he waited for it to return, knowing that it would.

            The blackness was comforting. He had once hidden in the shadows; had once belonged in the shadows, until the light had grabbed his heart and dragged him into sunlight. In the light of day he had lived the rest of his life, for her sake, but he had never completely belonged no matter how hard he tried. Oh, he had been respected and liked and even loved, but there had always been that nagging certainty that this was _wrong_, that his place was in the shadows, out of sight. He _was_ shadow, and shadow loved the light, but shadow should have stayed one step behind light, not in it.

            Now he was in darkness, and the light came for him.

            It was so bright, it cast the rest of everything in pure blackness, the antithesis of light. It strengthened him, beckoned him. He went, and found another presence within the light, waiting for him. He knew this presence, light to his darkness, always opposing. One had been shadow in light, yearning to hide. One had been light in shadow, yearning to shine. Both had been grievers.

            Now they were Griever.

**5; knight.**

_Why_, was Delyn's thought, _do the "great magics" always involve blinding light?_

He hadn't been able to see for some time now. When they'd come through time compression, he'd had the _oddest_ sensation, that he was falling while standing still. Or that some part of him was falling while the rest of him was standing still. Now was worse. He _felt_ it as Rinoa's magic reached out, to snatch Seifer's soul and body (holy light); felt it when she pulled _something_ (shadow) from a void that was so cold and hungry that that single fleeting touch frosted his soul. He felt it when she wove them both together, dark and light, into a creature like a lion, powerful and lean and although he didn't recognize it he heard the gasps from those who did. 

            "_Griever."_

Griever, the legendary. Griever, in the necklace that his father had worn for hell of a lot longer than he'd been alive. Griever the Guardian. Griever, _here._

            _What will you guard, he wondered. _Your mistress' memory?__

            "Forget Griever!" Ceres half-yelled. "Can we just get out of here before the other Guardians come to her aid?"

            The Guardian roared, bright sparkling energy. The Garden started to move, accelerating until the light that Griever exuded, the power granted it by Rinoa, was just a sparkle in the distance. Ceres' hand was icy, tangled in his, but Delyn could still _see_ Griever, see the lights in the distance as clearly as if he was there. Which he was, in a way.

            Delyn saw the GFs arrive, wrenched painfully from the SeeDs in the Gardens. Most of them, warned by Zell, had unjunctioned; the rest were unjunctioned, now. Fire and ice and more elements than he could name (shadelightwoodwaterwind--) lashed the newly-created Guardian as Griever caught Rinoa up in one hand; Delyn could see her, icepale and drained, her smile distant patience. Rinoa brushed him with a touch, acknowledging his presence--_my son you are here you have inherited some of my power, use it wisely--and smiled._

            Delyn saw light.

            He was snapped back to his corporeal body so fast a headache began to form at the base of his skull. The headache was ignored as Delyn ran for the pilot's console.

            "_Nida--" he gasped; and the light hit them. _

            It wasn't light, really. A composite of magical and physical force, it comprised three things: Griever's Shockwave Pulsar, amplified by the infusion of Rinoa's power; Rinoa's sorceress power, released at the moment of her death to find new bearers; and the power of the destroyed Guardians. Delyn could _see_ it. The others didn't. All they knew was that _something_ slammed into the Garden, making it rock. Quistis staggered backwards; Ceres doubled over in surprise, the glimmer in her eyes taking on a new odd sparkle. The men all grabbed for something immovable.

            At the pilot's console, Nida took one look at Delyn's face and yielded the helm to him.

            _You have some of my power, use it wisely--_

            He could sense it unfolding, sheathing him in brilliant wings. He was no sorcerer, his powers would not match even the weakest sorceress in spellcasting--but in other ways he could surpass them. The light was all around them; Delyn cast something of himself out, melding with the light, reaching through it for safe passage. He barely felt the controls gripped in his hands, instinct driving his actions as he guided the Garden through the maze of light.

            Behind them, Griever roared its grief to the sky and vanished.

**6; hunter.**

The Garden limped to a bleeding half at the shores of what might have been Esthar, or Timber; Ceres hadn't bene listening when Commander Zell bickered over their position with Delyn and the scanning tech. All she wanted to do was sleep, and yet she felt curiously full of energy. A glance to the left brought her gaze into the past of Quistis', and the noncom smiled at her wanly, icequeen cheeks paler than usual.

            "You've got it, too?" Quistis asked wearily, a faint smile in her eyes.

            Ceres nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Would magic rush through her teeth, if she opened her mouth? She'd thought that being a Sorceress was not much different from junctioning, but it was much different in reality. The Garden was going to be in an uproar for some time--many of them had learnt to hate Sorceresses after Adel and Ultimecia and Rinoa, and now they would have to deal with the fact that friends, family or _themselves_ were sorceresses.

            Zell was bending over the communications console now, trying to raise the other Gardens. Delyn slipped an arm around her and for once Ceres was glad of the unobtrusive support he provided, against the sudden uncertainty inside her. The young man smiled and mouthed:

            "_I'll be your Knight."_

            Ceres flushed, and cursed herself for blushing. To cover it, she asked him about the other Gardens; Delyn shrugged. He didn't know much more than she, whether Gardens Galbadia and Trabia had survived the blast. At the communications console, Zell let out a blistering series of curses. Obviously _he_ didn't know anything, either. There was a crackle as the stocky Commander triggered the intercom; Ceres leaned on Delyn, feeling oddly _alive_.

            _"SeeDs, we have arrived. We're safe here, and we'll survive as we always have."_

Zell was never good at speeches, she thought. Delyn winked at her. At least Zell was right about one thing. 

            They would survive. Together. 

**7; watcher.**

Fujin stood on a hill, looking down at the Garden. 

            It didn't look quite so military any more. The structure had suffered enough damage during the escape from Centra that the technicians had pronounced it quite unfixable; it would not fly, at least not until they managed to find a way to manufacture the parts that needed to be replaced. The SeeDs were already stripping the mangled metal to build houses, although the core, undamaged structures were left in place. Things might be uncomfortable for a while, especially once the first rogue sorceresses, women intoxicated by their new power, came stumbling in looking for things to destroy, but they would survive (as Zell said). 

            Rinoa's passing was already turning into legend. They were beginning to call her Hino, the one of Fire. Fujin wondered what _that_ name would get corrupted into. She could think of a few possibilities. The woman turned away from Garden, already reaching out with her new powers to search for a place where she could safely stay. 

            It was time for her to sleep.


	14. turning the wheel

turning the wheel

[llyse]

The world is dead. You know this, don't you? You did this, on the day that you awakened, screaming with your powers, to bring fire from the sky and sear the world with the throes of your birth.

He was waiting for you when you woke. He grieved, but he recognized his Mistress. 

And you took up the reins of your power; you caused that castle to be created, chained like your heart and soul. So many years of watching mankind squabble and fight over power and honour, and now you awaken to bring the wrath of God upon these stupid useless people. How you know the darkness within men's souls, how you see the shadow hiding with the best of intentions. You know them, have watched them, and you despise them. With all the force of one who is immortal, you despise those lowly _things that crawl upon the world and defile her with their excrement._

You will rid the world of them. 

Once you were one of them, but you do not remember. You watched them, but you do not remember. All you remember is the hate, for hate is what makes the world go round. Remember that. Hate. 

And when you reach out to the past, you will seek out the Knight first. He is the golden one, who does not deserve what he has. In your service will he achieve glory, and if you have to twist his dreams to bring him into that service, so be it. The ends justify the means. His servants too will have glory, even if they do not like you. The palehaired one stares in an oddly violent one-eyed way, and you shudder mentally away. She is different, much like you. She is an enigma that you must understand, to understand yourself. 

Think not. Fight. Destroy. The Black Gardens must fall. 

And when the Black One come to you, you understand it. You see the destiny that the fates have laid upon them, skeins and chains binding them all together, and those who are yet unbirthed, and those who were left behind. It stretches before you like the web of the stars, and in that moment before time swallows you you remember: you are not the Ultimate, the destroyer; you are not the Watcher; you are not the Wind. You are merely human, a girl-woman twisted by the fires of fate, and you Understand, now. 

And you must Fall. The Circle must turn. 

_Squall raised his gunblade, concentration etched on his face: "Renzokuken!"_

_Slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, and the final move:_

_"Fated Circle!"_


End file.
